Talawanda board member calls on district to terminate superintendent's contract

Dawn King, a member of the Talawanda School District Board of Education, called on her fellow board members to terminate the contract of district superintendent Ed Theroux at a board meeting June 20.

King, who was elected to the board in 2023, made a motion at the end of the board meeting "to terminate the superintendent's contract for insubordination." No board members seconded the motion.

Earlier in the meeting, King's husband Scotty King accused Theroux of using an alternate Facebook account to make political posts about a levy. He also claimed that the district violated FERPA by fulfilling a public records request.

Dawn King said her motion was unrelated to her husband's comments at the meeting. She said her reason is "confidential," but the board is aware of her motivations.

"They're aware of the situation that is the reason that I brought this termination motion up," King said, "but they did not know I was going to make the motion."

Theroux did not comment on the allegations. Holli Hansel, director of communications and public relations for the district, said she spoke with him Friday and that he "very firmly" denies the allegation that he used an alternate Facebook account to post about district issues. The Free Press has reached out to the account referenced by Scotty King.

Hansel said she was unaware of the specific records request King referred to as violating student privacy. If the accusation is true, Hansel said the person responsible should be held accountable.

At the board meeting, King's comments were limited to three minutes, and he did not present evidence for his allegations. After the meeting, he told the Free Press that his friend had tracked the IP addresses of several accounts which frequently commented on Talawanda's 2022 levy effort. One of the addresses, he said, was pinpointed "within a mile of [Theroux's] house."

The public records which violated student privacy, King said, were provided to him more than a year ago. He asked Theroux and Shaunna Tafelski, treasurer, for the district's previous four years' worth of ledgers in spreadsheet format. As he started looking through it, King said he found alternate transportation routes for special needs students with Individualized Education Plans, as well as students' addresses and parents' phone numbers.

According to school board policy, student names, addresses, phone numbers, date and place of birth, participation in sports and other activities and even height and weight are subject to public records requests as "directory information." Hansel said this information is mostly requested by recruiters and other academic institutions, not individuals.

Public records and busing at center of second controversy during meeting

During the board meeting, parent and former school board candidate Ivan Carver presented his findings from an independent survey of Talawanda parents regarding busing and school start times.

In April, the district sent out its own survey to determine whether it should maintain its one-tier busing system enacted after the 2022 levy failed to pass. One-tier busing eliminated separate routes for children who go to different schools and required that all high school students, as well as younger children who lived within two miles of their school, had to provide their own transportation.

Based on the April survey, the district opted to stick with one-tier busing and the current bell schedule. Through a public records request, Carver obtained parents' emails to send out his own survey to address what he viewed as issues with the first one.

"The very first question on my survey was do you need busing, and are you eligible under a one-tier system?" Carver said. The official district survey did not address student need, he said.

More than 800 people responded to Carver's survey, which did not require identification. He eventually filtered out 200 responses, and 234 of the 628 remaining responses indicated a need for busing that wasn't fulfilled by the one-tier plan.

Hansel said she has fielded multiple complaints from parents since Carver's survey went out, upset that the district provided phone numbers to him. Hansel said public records law required that they turn over the directory information. Carver's request was one of just a handful of times she remembers fulfilling similar requests for directory information from individuals rather than recruiters since she started at the district.

Administrator raises will be up for discussion at future meetings

Raises for administrators were also on the agenda for the June 20 meeting, but no members of the board seconded president Rebecca Howard's motion to adopt the resolution. Specific details on the raises are "confidential and protected by law" as negotiations are ongoing, Hansel said.

Board member Pat Meade said he was "not quite there" on the "wide package" that would have been up for a vote. Negotiations will continue with the board and administration during executive sessions which are not open to the public.

"I want to make sure we get this right," Meade said. "I want to make sure our comparisons are right. I want to make sure every position across the board is right, and I was not there yet tonight to do that."

The Board of Education will meet again on Tuesday, July 9 at 7 p.m. in the high school performing arts center.